DONT MARRY A SMOKER

 

 

Dr. Miriam Adahan, October, 2008–10–16

 

 

            A message to all single girls: please do not marry a smoker! Yes, you might be so desperate to get married that you don't care what his bad habits are. Or, you may be very attracted to the smoker, because smokers can seem so romantic, with their brazen and impetuous bravado, as they thumb their noses at rabbis, research and reality. However, it is important to know what awaits you down the line. Actions speak louder than words. And smoking announces the smoker's true, underlying attitude:

• "I don't care about my health. I don't care that each cigarette contains 5000 different poisons, many of them carcinogenic."

• "I don't care if the cigarettes destroy my immune system. The immediate pleasure is worth all the pain I might suffer in the future. Anyway, we all have to die sometime; I might as well enjoy life until I die."

• "I don't carry about my wife's health. It does not faze me that that women married to smokers have more cancer, especially cervical cancer."

• "I won't care about the children's health; it doesn't matter that they are likely to suffer from asthma or other chronic health conditions."

• "I suffer from severe anxiety; the only way I can calm down is with a cigarette. I might get violent if I don't smoke."

• "I am impulsive, impetuous and impatient. That's just the way I am. I don't have self-discipline. I give in to my urges and passions." 

• "I don't care about the future. I don't care if I get throat or lung cancer or leave my wife a widow."

• "I don't care who I hurt. It doesn't matter to me."

• "I don't care about all the money I waste. Cigarettes come first."

• "I'm a risk taker; I like to live on the edge. It's more exciting."

• "I don't keep my promises. True I promised to stop, but that was long ago and I no longer care and didn't know I'd have to deal with so much stress."

• "I don't care that I will soon become impotent. The future does not exist."

• "I am stubborn and irrational; all the research showing that cigarettes are dangerous is nonsense. Whenever G-d decides that my time is up, I'll die; smoking has no influence on my health or time of death."

• "I don't take responsibility for my health. Let the doctors take responsibility for me."

• "I don't care about the environment; I throw my cigarette garbage on the streets and don't give a hoot about it."

• "I don’t care if I wake up hacking and coughing every morning. I don't care who I awaken or who is affected by this habit."

Before marriage, most smokers tell their prospective brides, "I promise that I'll stop as soon as we are married." They think that the enjoyment of marriage will offset the pain of stopping to smoke. However, smokers seem to have a limited ability to imagine the future, despite all the gruesome pictures of diseased lungs or mouth cancers depicted on some cigarette packages. The minute the stress hits, they will reach for a cigarette, because the brain of a smoker is programmed to associate stress-reduction with cigarettes. Since life is full of stress, smoking is how an addict will deal it unless he seeks help to overcome the addiction.   

I have a neighbor whose daughter, the mother of seven, has undergone open heart surgery twice. Once, as I saw her husband driving down the street with the windows closed, puffing on a cigarette, with all seven stony-faced children and wife inhaling those poisons, I stopped him and asked him how he could do endanger his family members this way. He blithely answered, "I put on the air conditioner, so the smoke won't affect them." Another time, he told me, "Rav Kaduri, z.l. smoked until he died at age 120. So maybe I'll live longer if I smoke." 

No addiction is more difficult to break than the nicotine addiction (except, perhaps, the addiction to approval-seeking and people-pleasing of the women who marry them!) Furthermore, the minute he is upset with you, he will "punish" you by smoking or use the event as an excuse to calm himself with a cigarette and bring some pleasure back into his life.

When a woman marries a smoker, she rarely realizes the implications of his smoking.   She thinks it is simply a bad habit which is confined to one small part of his life and that this habit will not impact greatly on her life. Think again. When you marry an addict, the addiction always comes first – before you, the children and life itself. If he doesn't care about his life, will he care about yours?